What did you want to be when you were a kid? Try to remember how it felt imagining that you were it.

If you have the soul of a bus driver, you will not be happy until you’ve gotten behind that big steering wheel. Embrace who you are despite what anyone else tells you.

If you want writing to be a part of your daily routine, the way getting dressed and having your coffee is, then start by identifying your ideal writing situation. Write down or just dream about having all the perfect conditions for yourself. Allow yourself to feel that ideal, and then take a look at your reality.

A poem–Spring 2024 Don’t Tell Me How odd to wake with a song stuck in my head, though I had not heard it for years before then. It waited quietly– like the woman in Pixie Cove1– for the whisper of her lover. It breathed shallowly like the bulb of the tulip suspended until spring. It […]

I knew then that I was wasting time asking God if I was a writer; I was. I just needed to go home and write. Writers make time to write. What I learned from David Sedaris in his Masterclass had rubbed off.

Are you struggling with one choice versus another? Do you have a pencil and paper? If you don’t, grab some. The act of physically writing down all the things whirling around in your head can help you to make sense of the chaos in your mind.

I recently submitted a play to the Austin Film Festival. The festival creators added a playwrighting category a few years back. The play I sent in was one I’d started back in 2015–based on the true story of my parents’ encounter with an armadillo. When I heard their story, I immediately thought it would make […]

Helmer: And can you tell me what I have done to forfeit your love? Nora: Yes, indeed I can. It was to-night, when the wonderful thing did not happen; then I saw you were not the man I had thought you. Helmer: Explain yourself better–I don’t understand you. Nora: I have waited so patiently for […]

Roma: You want to learn the first rule you’d know if you ever spent a day in your life . . . you never open your mouth till you know what the shot is. Mamet, Glen Gary Glen Ross This line from the play Glen Gary Glen Ross is delivered in ire. In this bit […]

I go through a three-year cycle with jobs. It’s three years working full-time, three years working part-time, or three years training to be something that I eventually decide isn’t really for me.

Because I’ve been listening to a MasterClass hosted by the Duffer brothers, the creators of the Netflix series Stranger Things, I’m adapting their outlining technique for script writing to help me get passed the writer’s block I’ve been experiencing around a play that I started in 2012. The idea that I learned from Matt and […]